‘You guys have no idea’: Air Force blasted on planes

The Australian Defense Force has been criticized for phasing out aircraft it has only operated for a decade in favor of commercial replacements.

“You don’t really have a plan, do you? You have no idea,” independent senator Jacqui Lambie told senior Air Force officials at the federal budget inquiry Wednesday.

“The person wearing that uniform is truly embarrassing to me.”

The Royal Australian Air Force will phase out its C-27J Spartan aircraft just 11 years after the first ones landed in Australia, but has yet to announce a detailed replacement plan.

Spartans, small enough to land on short, soft runways but capable of carrying troops and equipment, are being phased out just a decade after they were first introduced.

The 10-strong fleet cost Australia approximately $1.4 billion, and the first aircraft arrived in early 2015.

But Air Chief Marshal Stephen Chappell told the ABC in May that circumstances had changed “seriously” since the decision to acquire C-27Js, such as changes in relations in the Pacific.

Air Marshal Chappell said Wednesday that commercial aircraft are now “part of the set of options” the Air Force will consider when replacing the Spartans.

“There won’t be a capacity gap (during the phase-out). How we fill that capacity will be a combination of C-27s and maybe one or more (commercial) options, at least over the next few years,” he said.

The defense force will receive $5 billion from the $425 billion Integrated Investment Program designed to increase military capacity to 2036.

Some of this figure would lead to the phasing out of the Spartans, but opposition defense spokesman James Paterson estimated that this would only amount to a maximum of $1 billion, leaving a deficit of $4 billion.

“Based on the figures before me, that’s a reasonable estimate,” Air Marshal Chappell said.

Defense officials remained tight-lipped when asked at the Senate inquiry where the rest of the savings would come from.

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